South of Ghent, Tech Lane Ghent Science Park - Campus Ardoyen and Campus Eiland , together some 60 hectares, developed by Ghent University, PMV and the City of Ghent - is the centre of gravity for the region's clean tech and advanced materials research.
The park brings together, on its own account, eleven university laboratories, twelve public research centres, eight industrial pilot and test facilities and more than ninety knowledge-intensive start-ups, with over 4,400 high-tech professionals. Its most distinctive clean-tech anchor is CAPTURE, the research and acceleration platform for resource recovery run jointly by Ghent University, VITO, the University of Antwerp and the VUB: since 2022 it occupies a purpose-built 7,000 m² facility on Campus Eiland, combining modular laboratories, a double-height pilot hall and an incubator for spin-offs, and organised around three clear pipelines - CO2 to Product, Water Fit for Use and Plastics to Resource - in which more than 300 researchers and over a hundred companies collaborate.
Campus Ardoyen, meanwhile, holds the materials value chain almost end to end: Ghent University's Department of Materials, Textiles and Chemical Engineering, with its Laboratory for Chemical Technology (chemical recycling, electrified cracking, renewable chemicals), the Centre for Polymer and Material Technologies (mechanical recycling and additive manufacturing), Sustainable Materials Science, the Center for Molecular Modeling and the Centre for Textile Science and Engineering - alongside OCAS, the advanced materials research centre of ArcelorMittal and the Flemish Region, the textile research institute Centexbel, a materials incubator, and the Ghent offices of Sirris and Agoria.
Energy and systems research sits in the VOLTA building, while imec-UGent's IDLab in the iGent tower works on AI for energy systems and smart buildings. Further into the city, that knowledge base runs on into practice: the Cleantech Cluster Region Ghent unites the City of Ghent, North Sea Port, Ghent University, the Province of East Flanders, POM East Flanders and VITO, and uses the port explicitly as a living lab - where the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant scales biotechnological processes to 75,000-litre fermentation with a staff of more than 180, and where carbon capture and utilisation, green hydrogen and sustainable fuels are being tested at industrial scale.
Spin-offs such as Hydrohm (electrochemical water treatment), ValCUN (aluminium 3D printing) and Mind4Energy round out the picture, together with accelerator programmes like The Circular Kickstart.